On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 17:53:59 GMT, (Henry Spencer) wrote:

In article ,
Dale wrote:
Vietnam was treated like an abberation in the day-to-day life rather
than an all consuming role.

It's odd if that was the attitude of the military...

It was deliberate government policy, set in the Oval Office. LBJ was
adamantly opposed to making Vietnam an actual war -- with recruiting
drives, propaganda campaigns, bond rallies, the whole nine yards --
because that would have required political compromises that would have
derailed many of his social initiatives back home.

Ironically, though, he could have probably gotten support for an "actual
war" early on. A lot of the criticism I heard at the time (as a kid) was
centered on the fact that we hadn't declared war and gone all out to win.
I doubt he forsaw at the outset getting as bogged down in Vietman as we
did, with the consequences it would have for the Great Society. Not that
I think Vietnam lended itself very well to a military solution anyway.

Wars tend to do that; he'd seen it happen under FDR.

What social initiatives of FDR were derailed by WW2? Maybe the extension
of Social Security to Medicare and perhaps a full-blown National Health
Insurance scheme? I thought most of his social initiatives were aimed
at getting the economy back on its feet. The war did that pretty well.

Note, in particular, that despite all the fuss over the draft, Vietnam did
not see much mobilization of the reserves and National Guard. This was
deliberate policy: a lot of those folks were older and settled into
communities, so mobilizing them would disrupt things a lot more and bring
the war home to the voting public much more. Drafting college students
looked to have much less political impact.

A minor miscalulation But I'd still like to think that Johnson was as troubled
by the chant of "Hey, hey, LBJ- how many kids did you kill today?" as has been
suggested by some historians. LBJ is a fascinating figure.

(And in reaction to the botched mess that resulted from this approach, the
post-Vietnam military reorganized responsibilities -- notably, moving
important specialties entirely into the reserves -- specifically to make
it *impossible* to fight another war, even a small one, without mobilizing
the reserves.)

That doesn't seem to be working out too well with public opinion either.

Thanks, as always, for the education.

Dale